The Art of Cold War
by clinkeroo
Summary: I write about Fleming's man and am rather serious when I want to be. If you like your Bond literate then please give this a try.
1. Chapter 1

_**The Art of Cold War:**_

_**Chapter One: The Breath of Hell**_

Miriam Elise Kay-Richardson (1917-1953), heiress to the fortune of banker Richard Kay, MBE (1898-1949), died Tuesday at the age of 36. Along with 23 other passengers and the five person flight crew of Monarch Airlines Flight 6780, Mrs. Richardson was initially reported lost at sea when the Convair 240 she was travelling in veered radically off coarse while on final approach to Chicago Midway Airport, apparently crashing into Lake Michigan. Low visibility and winter storm conditions, which are believed to have contributed to the crash, are hampering search efforts and all on board have been officially declared lost. Mrs. Richardson is survived by her husband, William Richardson, the junior United States senator from Massachusetts, and their five year old daughter, Chastity. Senator Richardson's office has released a statement requesting "respect for the family at this time of tragic loss." It is believed the senator and his daughter have left Washington D.C. and have returned to the family's summer home in Nantucket. Viewings for the deceased will be held…

_--Boston Post, January 2nd, 1951_

He rolled from bed at four in the morning at the insistence of the hotel phone on the cheap, pressed-board nightstand.

"Your wake-up call, Sir. Would you like to order room service for breakfast?" the far-too awake male voice inquired.

Not wishing to find out what greasy nightmare might pass for breakfast in his greasy lodgings, he politely declined; the CAA boys would at least have some donuts in the tent. Donuts and gallons of warm, bitter coffee.

He sat on the edge of the bed, feet flat on the ground, and his back straight, running his hands up and down the long muscles of his legs. They ached from the change of barometric pressure, but the muscles were still hard and lean. He'd run cross country in school and would have pursued it at university as well, if the War, and his four year enlistment hadn't intervened.

Slowly rolling his neck until the crackling stopped, he paused a moment to look out at the still dark, mostly sleeping city of Chicago. There was ice painting the edges of the window in crystal webs. Eventually he made his way to the cramped confines of the hotel shower.

The 1950 Lincoln Cosmopolitan had been leased along with seventy of its brethren to the US government. The car drove smoothly, and soon he was turning north on Broadway.

* * *

Felix Leiter looked out at the frozen ridge surrounding the shore of Lake Michigan. The freezing rain and sleet drove in off the lake directly into his face, and he knew without the goggles he would not even be able to make out the waves crashing against the ice shelf more than a hundred yards away.

Longing for the dry heat of his native Texas, Felix stomped his feet repeatedly into the ground to keep the blood circulating. He'd seen and felt his fair share of snow and ice in Europe, but there was something entirely unforgiving about Chicago in the winter where the wind off the lake was an icy breath from Hell.

Mark Willnow, the chief investigator working the crash for the Civil Aeronautics Authority stationed in Springfield, was out on the ice sheet with some of his team. The early debris field was mostly washing up along Camp Logan and the Illinois Beach Park but was now beginning to spread as the storm grew each hour. So far a few seats, some luggage, and the remains of five distinct bodies had been recovered.

"If the craft is down within ten miles of shore, we might find her in the spring," Willnow had told him over a cup of coffee in the portable military shelter they'd set up on the coast side of the National Guard training facility. "Things don't get much more than a 100 feet deep on this side of the lake until then, but after that…" he made a diving motion with his hand.

The wind had been howling loud enough outside the tent that the stocky bear of a man had to shout to be heard above the clamour.

"So why is Langley interested in this one?" he asked. "I've worked with the FBI on a few of these, but never your crew."

Felix had shouted back, his words coming out in puffs of white exhaust, still tinged with his native, friendly drawl.

"The British lady was from an important family over there, I guess. A lot of connections and a lot of money. They say she's worth nearly seven million pounds, and that's more than enough to shake sabers at the state department. I guess all those Ivy League boys back in Virginia still view me as something of a slow minded **** kicker with the accent and all. I've been bucking for a European placement in the Clandestine Branch since I finished training, but I'm not sure it's going to be in the cards for me. Seems I have a hard time keeping my trap shut when it comes to political savvy, so they shipped me off to the tundra here to be case officer with a staff of none to appease Mother England and give their ears a vacation."

"So I figure, what the hey, I'll have a few of those Big Al dago beef sandwiches on Uncle Sam's dime and try to keep warm for a couple of weeks."

The big man had laughed and ran a hand through his nearly frozen beard.

"So, how's that _keeping warm_ part working for ya?"

Leiter had spent hours on the beach waiting for the debris to be brought in by Willnow's various teams which were comprised of eighteen men up and down the coast. The pieces eventually made their way up to one of Camp Logan's barracks, which had been designated for the use of the salvage squad, but Leiter received first crack at them at the beach tent, looking for any signs of Miriam Kay-Richardson's fate.

He'd been skipping stones from the beach across the ice, something he'd never been able to master with water of the wetter variety, on the afternoon of the third day, when his belt radio crackled loud enough to be heard above the din of the wind and waves. He pulled back on the parka's hood, dislodged his ear-muffs, and barked back a "10-09" command into the set, before pressing the cold metal to his ear.

"Willnow here, I'm bringing you back an object of interest personally, Felix. Didn't want this one getting "lost" like some of the others."

Felix knew what the veteran CAA man was speaking off. All aeroplane crashes brought out the gawkers and the grizzly souvenir collectors, but according to Mark, celebrity fatalities, especially wealthy celebrities, brought out the ghouls in troves. The state police had been doing their best to keep the hundreds of would-be beachcombers at bay, but as the debris-field lengthened it was becoming nigh impossible to manage due to manpower restrictions alone. Willnow had expressed concern to Leiter that he was even worried about some of his own men.

"They're good guys," he said earlier that afternoon over Italian beef sandwiches, which had been spicier, and even better than he'd remembered, although like most meals he'd had since he'd enlisted, it was cold by the time it made its way into their hands. "But government jobs being what they are, the money this stuff brings in from the curio crowd might be disgusting, but it still spends."

Ten minutes after radioing in, Willnow pulled up in a Dodge pick-up, the bed weighted down with several hundred pounds of sandbags to cut down on the rear-end drift, and thick snow chains wrapped about the tyres.

As the man climbed out of the cab, he paused to shake the snow from his clothing.

"Santa," Felix prodded him. "What did you bring me this year?"

Willnow frowned and jerked his thumb to the bed of the truck.

"A sore ass if you don't help me get this thing in the tent."

"The thing" was a large leather luggage case that had been water-logged when pulled from the lake, but was now frozen solid and looked to weigh somewhere north of twenty stones.

"I've known women that packed heavier," Leiter grunted as they struggled to navigate the bag into the shelter.

Once inside, Leiter brought over two of the Perfection kerosene space heaters, placed one on either side of the bag, and lit both through their Pyrex windows.

Willnow had settled down on a bench with a cup of coffee while Felix had tended to the lamps, and the agent joined him.

"So what makes this one of interest?" he asked.

Mark motioned to the bag with his steaming cup.

"You see the saddle girth, the green-red-green web?" he said with a deep cough.

Felix nodded, his own cup pressed between his frozen hands.

"That's Gucci, Italian, maybe out of New York, maybe Milan, probably worth more than a stiff like you or I would make in three months. No Tom, Dick, or Harry bought that baby, more likely it was a Geoffrey, or an Alistair, or a…"

"Or a Miriam Day-Richardson that could afford it," Leiter finished.

Eventually they had to use a torch on the zipper. It was delicate work not singeing the bag, but Leiter took it slowly and deliberately.

The heat lamps had done their work, and the inside of the case now smelled like a fishing pond in high summer.

"Do we have any information on her personal belongings yet?" Willnow asked.

Leiter shook his head.

"No, the good senator is still sequestered on his island with the kid and about thirty servants. All of our requests so far haven't even made it past his office staff. Rumour has it the poor SOB has cracked a little and they've got him drugged up pretty good. So there's no help forthcoming."

It took time to work their way through the still-half-frozen garments, but they seemed to belong to a woman of modest proportions and high-end tastes. Most of the clothes were marked from European designers that Leiter had not only never heard of, but could hardly pronounce, even with his more than workmanlike skills in the French language.

There was no "homerun" waiting for Leiter in the case that would promise him a quick return to McLean, some form of direct identification linking the bag to its lost owner and satisfy the clamouring of both Whitehall and Fleet Street in one fell swoop, but there had been a false bottom to the case that yielded to a flat bladed screwdriver.

Leiter lifted free an inner, black felt case about a foot long by three inches deep, which had been specially made for the cubby space. He gasped as he opened the lid to reveal three broaches and six necklaces that were made up of more diamonds than Leiter had seen in his entire life.

"God," Leiter exhaled while slowly shaking his straw-coloured mane back and forth. "If I were a little more dishonest, I'd be a lot happier right now."

* * *

There was something eerily disturbing about flying into an airport when you had just spent the better part of a week investigating a crash site, Felix Leiter decided.

The Douglas DC-4 touched down smoothly at the small, two runway affair that was the newly christened Nantucket Memorial Airport. He'd had a stopover at the airport once before during the war when the Navy had been running the show. Now, the old military structures were in the process of being torn down and replaced with a modern tower, terminal, and hangers.

He was promptly met at the exit gate by a behemoth of a man dressed in the black garb of a chauffeur. Leiter had once been to a circus back in Houston where a gorilla dressed in a bellhop uniform had chased a slew of clowns about the centre ring of the big top. Leiter, who as a child had been terrified of clowns, enjoyed the act immensely. This man brought back memories of the gorilla, with his tight fitting uniform topped off with a diminutive chauffeur's cap on his massive head.

The man was well over six and a half feet tall and was as thick as a mature bull across the chest. He stood at ease with his hands crossed behind his back, and his chiselled chin stuck forward like the missing fifth head from Mt. Rushmore. The face, however, was vaguely familiar and the voice intelligent, polite, and soft spoken.

"Agent Leiter?" the mountain asked.

"Or so my mother claims," he answered.

The man chose to ignore the quip, and motioned with an open palm to a curb where sat a long, black Cadillac Fleetwood limousine.

"I like the senator, already."

Once again, silence from the gallery of one, then, "Your luggage has already been loaded. Would you like me to store your case as well?"

Leiter looked down to his right hand, which held the dark briefcase containing the jewellery they'd found at Camp Logan.

"No, I'm afraid this one is for the senator's eyes only."

"Very well then, Sir."

The trip up to William Richardson's mansion on Branson Point was brief and smooth. It was one of several huge estates that had slowly started to transform the former whaling island into one of the wealthiest postal codes in the entire country.

The mountain escorted Leiter to a library on the first floor.

"He'll be with you shortly," he said before turning to leave. "Please be brief, Agent Leiter. The senator is a brilliant man, but he is in mourning, and not quite himself. His doctor has already forbid him from any formal executions of his duties, and would not be happy to know of this meeting."

Suddenly, Leiter snapped his fingers as he recognized the man.

"You're Special Agent Fredrick Ffaulks, the guy whose knee got blown out by those Puerto Ricans at Blair House last year when they tried to ice Truman. You're a bloody hero, what are you doing in a monkey suit?"

The man paused, his back still facing Leiter, and shrugged.

"The Service doesn't have much need of an agent with a bum leg. The senator needed security, I needed a job, and he pays well." With that, the man left.

Leiter felt bad about the flippant manner in which he'd brought up the man's career ending injury, and made a mental note to apologise later if given the opportunity. The guy was probably carrying a lot of mental scarring along with his knee; he wondered if he would have fared as well as the big man if their roles were reversed.

The library was filled with oak woodworking and shelving and smelled like a bibliophile's illicit dream with the scents of leather, cloth, and paper weaved together in a deep perfume. Rather than take one of the comfortable looking red leather reading chairs, Felix chose to stand and walk among the thousands of volumes that lined the wall.

There were the prerequisite volumes of classics both in English and French, and an entire bookcase devoted to legal texts, many of which were in Latin. What he found interesting though, was that unlike the private libraries he'd encountered in his past, the books in this one actually appeared to have been used; the bindings creased, the covers worn with the sweat and oil from the hands of a voracious reader. There was another bookcase devoted to works of philosophy, the editions of which appeared to each be in the native language of the author; Kant's _Kritik der reinen Vernunft _in German, Descartes' _Méditations métaphysiques_ in French, even a slew of Oriental texts that Leiter couldn't even begin to distinguish.

He noticed an edition of Melville's _Moby-Dick; or, The Whale_ that was bound with cracked black leather and looked older than God, and reached out to touch it.

""Two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires," said a deep, gravelly voice with a Boston lilt.

Felix turned to find Senator William Richardson standing next to a leather chair, one hand positioned on its back as if he were using it as a cane for support. The man didn't appear to be even a shadow of the vibrant figure Leiter had seen on the television and in articles. For a man barely forty, he looked broken, with deep black wells beneath both eyes, and the slack jawed face of the heavily sedated.

"Senator…, I'm deeply," Leiter began, stumbling over his words.

"Sorry for disturbing me at a time such as this? Yes, I know," the man waived a hand dismissively. He wore a thick green paisley lounge robe that flapped open with the motion, revealing to Leiter that he wore nothing else beneath save his slippers. The agent looked away quickly.

"Melville's Starbuck was from Nantucket, you know," he said absently.

"No, Senator, I did not," Felix said, feeling immensely uncomfortable in the presence of the older man. He had a few stern lessons drilled into him early on in life from his father; one was to avoid a beautiful woman that you made cry, they will always hate you for it; the other was to never see powerful men in moments of weakness, for when they get back on their feet, they will attempt to crush you to regain their face.

"Have you found her yet, Agent Leiter?"

Felix made to reply, but was cut off by another wave of the hand, and another flash of sickly pale and private skin.

"No, no. I can see in your face you haven't. Then why are you here? It would not be wise to take my privacy lightly at the moment; there is a rabid, little doctor running about here who can be more menacing than even F-Squared at his best when it comes to protecting my well-being."

"F-Squared?" he said.

"Oh, excuse me. Fred Ffaulks, my personal chauffeur and head of my private security. I have this habit of giving those around me nicknames; titles of endearment, if you will. So, why are you here then, if not to bring Miriam back home?"

_Did he mean her body?,_ Felix wondered. _Dear God, he wasn't under some delusion that the women had survived, was he?_

"No, Sir, we are simply trying to ascertain if some of the personal belongings that have been recovered are hers, and if they are, to return them to you for safe keeping. Usually, such items are tagged and retained until the CAA investigation is completed, but due to the value of the items involved, we wanted to return them to the family immediately. If for any reason, they were to be needed again, we would just ask to examine them once more, but that is highly unlikely. You may want to take a seat, Senator."

The man stood there for a moment, his expression empty, and Felix began to wonder if he had even heard him. Slowly, Richardson walked around the chair and sat down.

Leiter brought the black bag over to the low flat table that sat before the senator, took a knee, and then removed the felt jewellery case from within, setting it on the wooden surface of the counter.

There was another long pause before the senator extended a pale shaking hand to the box.

"Yes, it was hers," he said in a whisper. Slowly his hands opened the case to reveal the stunning sea of diamonds. He dug his hand into their brilliance, and brought one of the strands to his cheek.

"It doesn't really matter, you know?" he croaked in a dead and empty voice that said it had no more tears to shed. "The only thing that I ever had of any real value is gone."

Richardson hunched further over the stones, and a violent sob shook his shoulders like an aftershock, only to be followed by a second a few moments later. Suddenly, the empty well had been refilled, and the man began to openly weep.

What had been awkward for Leiter a few moments earlier had quickly become unbearable. He retook his feet, and gave the senator and his grief some privacy by edging out the library door and into the main vestibule of the mansion.

Felix turned to find himself facing a diminutive, older, Chinese fellow with a bald pate and a pair of rounded bifocal glasses. The man looked into the library at the hunched form of Richardson, and then back to Leiter with anger exploding in his eyes.

_"Ni gan shenme?" _the man shouted, his face and balding head turning red with emotion. _"Bie darao ta!"_

Felix took a step back, and actually felt himself instinctively reaching to where his Beretta lay nestled under his left arm.

_"Daifu, bie dui ta da han da jiao!" _came Ffaulks' voice, now booming.

The angry little man raised a fist at Leiter, shook it once, and then skirted off deeper into the mansion.

"The doctor, I presume," said Felix.

The big man, who'd been coming through the front door with Leiter's bags, nodded.

"Just be thankful I came along when I did. Dr. Chow has a distinct lack of bedside manner."

Felix looked at the bags in the other man's hands.

"I really hadn't intended on staying, Ffaulks. I was just going to grab a room in town and catch the next flight back to Chicago in the morning."

It was then the senator came out of the library, looking slightly more composed.

"Nonsense," he said. "There are twenty empty bedrooms in this house. F-Squared can drive you back out in the morning. Until then, you're our…" he hesitated, and appeared to be on verge once more of falling off an emotional cliff. "Until then, you're my guest. Fredrick, ask Melinda to turn over a bed in the east wing."

Felix gave his thanks and followed Ffaulks to his room for the night.

* * *

He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept in a real bed. The sorry excuses in the hotels and motels the Agency afforded him were barely more comfortable than the nights he'd spent sleeping on the frozen ground in France and Germany. Usually the beds were broken, worn things that had seen thousands of amorous nights from people that were enjoying themselves far more than he in his restless slumber.

Dinner had been a simple affair and had been served at a sidebar as opposed to the main dining room which appeared as if it could seat more than the mess hall back at Camp Logan. He and the senator had been joined by Ffaulks and Dr. Chow, who was silent through the entire meal but never removed his eyes from Richardson, except to shoot Leiter a few cold darts of suspicion as if he were about to climb over the table at any moment and stab the senator in the heart with a shrimp fork. There had been a simple fish chowder followed by lamb chops which had been exquisitely prepared and served by a three-person wait staff.

The senator didn't ask once about the crash site, and Leiter steered very wide of any conversation about the man's wife. Instead, they discussed the Red Sox who were preparing for spring training in Sarasota, still clinging to the core players from the '46 pennant winners.

Near the end of the meal, Felix began to wonder at the quiet of the house, and once again made the mistake of opening his mouth.

"I notice that you daughter didn't join us this evening, Senator."

The empty, slackened look immediately returned to the man's face. Ffaulks, who was sitting between the senator and Leiter, turned and gave a small shake of his head for Felix. Dr. Chow, who hadn't spoken a word of English since they'd met, simply increased the intensity of his glaring at Leiter, as if he could make him burst into flame if he only concentrated hard enough.

"Chastity doesn't really understand what has happened," Richardson said after a long pause, his voice a monotone drawl. "She doesn't understand why her mother isn't here; they've never really been separated for any length of time. The doctor suggested we keep her in familiar surroundings for the time being, try not to introduce too many new people. Right now, Melinda, her nanny, is tending to her up in her room. She's been sleeping quite a bit." Another pause. "Sleeping and crying."

Felix excused himself a short time later, and Ffaulks escorted him back to his the door, Ffaulks hesitated a moment.

"You seem to be a swell fellow, Leiter, but the word on you is right; you don't know when to shut the hell up."

Leiter wanted to ask him exactly what "the word" had been on him, and whose mouth had been on the pitching end of things, but judging from Ffaulks' size and general demeanour, he decided it would be an excellent time to start practicing shutting the hell up.

"These people, this family, they've been good to me, and they've been through hell of late. Don't hurt them anymore than God already has. I'll come collect you in the morning, take you back to the airport, and then never see you again."

The big man turned and walked away having left no opportunity for Leiter to comment, even if he had wanted to.

And so it was that Felix had been introduced to his down pillow, his flannel sheets, his firm mattress, and the blissful, odour-free warm water of his personal bath. He soaked the smell and feel of Lake Michigan from his skin, and then settled in early for the evening.

It was two in the morning when he snapped awake certain there had been a noise. He strained his ears and waited for it to sound again.

"Mommy?" came a small girl's voice from the hallway outside his door. "Are you there, Mommy?"

There was confusion in that voice, and a few moments later there was a thudding sound, as if she'd stumbled into something. This was followed by the muffled gasps of quiet sobbing.

Leiter opened the door to his room and looked down the dimly lit length of the east wing. The small form of a child was curled up against a wall about two doors down from his room, and he went to her.

She recoiled away from him, pressed herself harder against the wall, as if she could just push her way through it.

"Who are you?" she said to him.

He could see her now, up close in the muted light. She was a beautiful child dressed in a pink, flowered nightgown, with light brown hair that hung to her shoulders and flat grey eyes. Flat grey eyes that looked as if they were dilated and glossed over.

Now it was Leiter's turn to get angry. Who drugged up a five year old kid? Someone wasn't trying to make the girl's life easier, they were trying to make their own life easier by not dealing with big questions from a tiny mouth.

"Who are you?" the girl repeated.

"I'm Felix," he whispered back to her.

"Felix?" she said. "Like the kitty cat?"

Leiter smiled as he thought of the black and white cartoon animal that had caused him so much taunting and grief on the playgrounds of his youth.

"That's right, Darlin'," he told her, and she beamed at this. Then the grin quickly faded away.

"Why are you whispering?" she asked him.

Felix had knelt down next to her so he would be at her height. Now, he shrugged in reply to her question.

"They wouldn't be happy if they found out you were awake, and I don't think they'd be happy with me if they knew I was talking to you."

The girl let this new information sink in.

"I can't find my mommy," she finally said.

"She's not here right now, Darlin'," he told her.

"Where did she go?"

Leiter didn't spend that much time around children any longer, but their amazing capacity to ask unending streams of questions was quickly coming back to him.

_To the bottom of a huge, cold, dark lake,_ he thought to himself.

"Away," he answered.

This seemed to placate her, but only for a moment.

"Where's my daddy?"

"He's about," he said. "He's sleeping right now, just like you should be, Chastity. That's your name, right? Chastity?"

There was a hesitant moment, and then she slowly nodded. _How could they drug such a beautiful kid,_ was all he could think

"That's what they call me," she whispered to him.

"Well, Chastity, why don't you show me where your room is and we'll get you tucked back in?"

The girl thought for a moment, and then she nodded and stood up. Felix did the same and she took two of his fingers on his right hand and led him back to the west wing.

She paused a moment between two of the doors, as if trying to remember the correct one. Leiter wondered what it would be like to grow up in such an incredibly wealthy world where there were so many rooms in your house, hell, houses, that you couldn't remember which one was yours.

Finally she made her choice, and he followed her in. Even in the dark, he could make out the images of pastures filled with ponies that adorned the walls. Felix nearly tripped over a small table where sat a miniature tea set, but finally managed to navigate the girl to the small bed in a corner of the room.

She climbed in, and he pulled the covers up to her chin, giving her a light kiss on her forehead.

As her grey eyes closed, the last time he would see them for nearly twenty years, she asked a soft question.

"Will my mommy be home when I wake up, Mr. Cat?"

"That's one you'll have to ask your Daddy, Honey," he told her, feeling sick inside.

He watched her for a few moments, making sure her breathing evened out and that she was back in the land of Nod.

Felix quietly closed the door to the girl's room behind him. As he released the handle and turned to go back to his own bed, a fist attached to an arm as thick as a log slammed into his stomach and knocked the air from his lungs.

He curled up from the punch but managed to stay on his feet. That turned out to me a mistake. A huge hand grabbed at his nightshirt in the middle of his back, and then the enormous fist of his assailant's other arm returned to his stomach like a crushing, graceless hammer.

"I told you to leave them alone," Ffaulks' voice growled at him.

Leiter felt himself being lifted in the direction of the blow, sandwiched between the two giant arms. The huge man swung him up in the air, his legs dragging across the ceiling, before allowing the momentum of the arc to bring him crashing down on the far side of his assailant.

Unlike the movies, fights that began with a sucker punch were usually over in a matter of moments. And so it was Leiter found himself being drug along the floor by the back of his nightshirt's collar, being half choked in the process.

He was only half conscious as he was hauled across the smooth tiles of the foyer, and then down the not so smooth stone steps of the front porch.

"The man extends the hand of hospitality to you, and you creep about his home like a burglar in the middle of the night. You're scum, Leiter."

Leiter tried to gain his feet again but still found himself stumbling awkwardly forward at the physical insistence of his assailant. Through bleary eyes, Felix looked up to see that he was approaching the Fleetwood limousine which was still nestled against the front curb. Approaching it far too fast.

Fredrick Ffaulks drove his face into the rear quarter panel of the stretch, dentingthe car severely in the process.

* * *

When Leiter awoke, he was laying on a terminal bench outside Memorial Airport, his luggage strewn on the sidewalk about him, his memories of a comfortable bed having long been forgotten.

* * *

He spent the flight back to Chicago, and the subsequent drive back to the ice, thinking of how the agency was going to let him go. How long would it take? Would there be a mock tribunal before they dispatched him? He still had several years left on his GI Bill option, so chances were he could resume his life where he left off seven years earlier, before the Marines and The Agency has waylaid him into a life of service.

The first thing that struck Felix as odd was the lack of activity as he pulled into Camp Logan. It was six p.m. when he manoeuvred the Cosmopolitan up to the converted barracks, and the only other vehicle in sight was Willnow's truck.

The inside of the barracks smelled ungodly, like a fishing wharf at low tide. There were piles of debris everywhere, in various stages of inspection and tagging. After a day's absence, Felix could tell the piles had grown and wondered what new hells awaited him if he wasn't already canned.

He found Mark Willnow sitting in the rear of the barracks. The desk's lamp was the sole island of light in the cavernous building, and the man was updating a debris inventory ledger while placing small numbered notes on a map of the ever expanding field.

"Where is everybody?" he asked as he entered the light's radius.

"They've all gone…" Willnow began, halting when he looked up at Felix's bruised and freshly scabbed face. "What in Sam Hill happened to you? You look like some critter my cat would leave on my porch."

Leiter tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a grunt.

"Turns out the good Senator might be the sanest person living in that house, and that isn't saying much."

Willnow took a moment to digest the titbit, and then shrugged.

"Doesn't matter much, anyway. The CAA called this afternoon, Washington is shutting us down immediately."

Felix was shocked. There were still bodies washing up on public beaches, and they were shutting them down.

"What about the…"

"The local authorities have been given jurisdiction. They're not going to bag and tag, they're just going to clean the mess up. We were given an immediate C&D, so I sent the boys home. I'm only still here so I could deliver a message to you."

"And that would be?" Leiter asked, knowing full well what he was going to say.

Willnow uncradled the phone sitting next to him on the desk and handed the handset to Leiter.

"You are to call the operations officer handling you immediately. Apparently they're a little more clandestine than you are, they didn't leave any names."

He looked down at the black dial of the telephone and couldn't believe they would do it like this. Maybe they were going to call him back to McLean so they could do it up close and personal.

He dialled the number to the main exchange.

Two transfers later and a gruff voice barked a question into his ear.

"Leiter, Sir," he answered, and that was all he could squeeze in for the next five minutes. His face must have changed expression a hundred times during that conversation. Willnow stared at him when he finally hung up the phone with a robotic, "Yes, Sir."

"What was all that?"

Leiter swallowed hard before speaking.

"They're pulling me out tonight. I shouldn't be saying this, but they granted my preferred assignment. I'm going to be working out of Paris. I've got just enough time to get back to Virginia and pack my bags. Parris Island to Paris in seven years; Momma Leiter would be proud."

"I guess congratulations are in order," Willnow stood up and took his hand, one of the few parts of his body that still worked free of pain. "There is something I should show you though, even though the official whistle has been blown."

Leiter frowned. One thing that had been made very clear to him was that he should drop his present assignment immediately.

"You remember Jenkins?" Willnow asked.

"Yeah, the bald guy on the North Beach crew. What about him?"

"He was shot this morning," the big man said. Seeing Leiter's reaction, he continued. "No, no, he's going to be OK. His crew found two guys hauling stuff out of the water down in the marsh area. They radioed it in to the police, and then moved in. The beachcombers opened fire immediately and took down Jenkins with a shoulder wound. They had the crew pinned down until the cops showed up and started returning fire, at which point the idiots surrendered."

"That's insane," Leiter said. "Who would be willing to shoot someone over this crap?" he waived an arm about the piles of flotsam and jetsam surrounding them.

"No, the strangest thing is what they pulled out of the car after the arrest," Willnow told him, a dark look rippling across face. "I know you have your travelling papers, Felix, but I think you might want to see this."

Willnow took a flashlight from his desk and then headed out to his truck. Felix followed.


	2. Chapter 2

_**The Art of Cold War:**_

_**Chapter Two: Shades of Black**_

The two Chinamen sat huddled together at the rear of the 12:15 Metro Red Line, chirping back and forth like a smaller, Oriental version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They were both dressed in identical navy blue _zhifu_-style suits and kept their conversation low. However it was not low enough for Jacob Mendelssohn's sensibilities.

Jacob was seventy-three years old, and had spent forty-seven years working for the Pennsylvania Railroad out of Union Station in Washington D.C. as a passenger car attendant. Since his retirement five years earlier, he still rode the Red Line every day into the capitol to walk about the National Mall, or FDR Park, feeding pigeons and people watching. But the true reasons behind his daily sojourns were the train rides themselves, and the continuation of his quest.

His family had emigrated from Prussia through Ellis Island when Mendelssohn had been only seven. His father had stressed that to succeed in their new country, his seven children would learn to be Americans. He kept a birch stick next to their kitchen door that he would use to strike the bare knuckles of his children if they dared to utter a single word of German, and later, if they let their accents surface for even the smallest inflection. It had been easier for Jacob, having been the second youngest, to adapt quickly, but there had been many days when his older siblings had gone to school wearing gloves to hide the bruises and slash marks on their hands.

When he'd moved from New York to Maryland, with his young wife, Rosalyn, and begun working out of Union Station, he was shocked at the number of languages he was assaulted with tending the passenger cars as the richer diplomats and consulates came to and fro their embassies everyday from their estates in the surrounding countryside.

The sheer audacity and aloofness of these people made his knuckles ache from long ago scars that now only existed in his mind. Year after year, his hatred for the "stuffed suits" grew, but for the most part, he contained it inside, saving his ranting diatribes for his wife and two sons over their modest dinner table.

The breaking point had been on Christmas Day of 1939. Four German diplomats, two men and two women, all wearing their party pins proudly on their coat lapels, had boarded the 18:30 Senator. It had been bad enough he was going to spend a healthy chunk of his holiday riding to Boston and back, but when the party had bordered the train drunkenly stumbling out of the cold and snow, slurring their guttural German, it was all he could do to contain himself in glowering indignity.

The car would have normally been full on a Monday evening, but the national holiday and rough weather had crippled their business. As it was, there had been merely twenty people sharing the car that night.

Jacob had taken his station at the head of the car as the Germans found seats about half way down, laughing and carrying on as if they were still pouring Schnapps cordials at the Embassy. He stared at them with the coldest, harshest face he could manage, and tried not to notice as all the other passengers' eyes began to take darting, heated glances at the newcomers. The news out of Poland was still fresh in Americans' minds, and these people might have been endangering their own welfare through their drunken stupidity.

One of the women had been the first to catch his disgusted expression, and she immediately put her fingers to her lips to stifle a giggle.

The man sitting next to her muttered, _"Was ist los?"_ Not wanting to be left out of the joke. He was a big blonde fellow wearing a fur-lined anorak. The woman whispered something to him and his gaze became stern as it rose to meet Mendelssohn's.

"Is there some sort of problem?" the man half shouted across the car which was now clattering along the rails toward the countryside.

Jacob had worked for the Pennsy for most of his life at that point in time, and he was already a bitter man. A bitterness that would only become worse in later years as he lost his wife to cancer, and lost his sons to distance and indifference. As the man stood, Jacob was all too aware of the other man's size and obvious strength, just as he was aware of his own frail, 5'7" frame with his balding, aged patch of sad black hair. He had inherited his father's stubbornness, however, and he had no problem in answering the man's challenge.

"Do you not realize how rude it is to speak a foreign language in a country that has been nothing but a welcome host to you?" he shouted back in perfect German. "This war your Führer has started has everyone here on edge, and when you sit there and babble back and forth in German, it makes people distrust you, and it makes you look like pompous asses!"

He wasn't sure at what part of his speech he'd switched over to English, but when he'd finished, the large, blonde man began to rise to his feet in anger.

And then the clapping started.

Every person on the train who wasn't named Klaus, or Hans, or some such moniker, began to clap their hands and cheer. For the first time in his life, Jacob Mendelssohn felt like he had done something great; something he could be proud of, even if it had been done out of spite, rather than patriotism.

The man's face turned from the crimson of anger, to a paler shade of embarrassment, and the woman who had been giggling, but was now more stoic, almost horrified looking, pulled him back into his seat.

"I apologise," he muttered, his tone indicating he was doing nothing of the kind. "You are right, of course."

Jacob had gone home that night with such a feeling of pride and accomplishment, that he had awoken his wife and told her of what he had done, and in his zeal had made love to her with a zest he hadn't managed since their courting.

And that is how the quest had begun. It grew along with his intolerance and hatred of foreigners. He began with a simple phrase that he composed one night over drinks with his some of his co-workers at McNally's Pub on Connecticut Avenue. Taking its genesis from his speech that Christmas Day, it went:

"Do you not realize how rude you are being? To speak a foreign language in a country that has been nothing but a good host to you is not only impolite to the people around you, but it makes them feel as if you are conspiring against them and destroys any feelings of trust they may have felt for you had you only spoken in English."

The German translation had been easy enough, and to that he added French and Spanish in quick order. He didn't know how to speak either, but to learn the one paragraph through repetition, and to speak it fluently, only took a matter of weeks for each, even if he had no concept of what the individual sounds and words meant. It was the message, and the intonation, that mattered.

He took private glee in his delivery and the shocked look in the foreigners' eyes as they were scolded in their native tongue by a mere car attendant; someone that they thought was a dullard, and beneath them.

So then came Italian, and then Portuguese, and then, over the ensuing years, twenty-seven other languages. He began to keep a journal in which he noted each night the languages he'd used that day, and the reactions of the various men and women he had chided.

As Washington changed, and the venom in his tone increased over the years, the occasional clapping he'd received in support of his "sermons" (as he liked to think of them) died down, as did the embarrassment felt by the people he lashed with his tongue. The complaints filed against him slowly began to build, and as the Pennsy began its merger talks with New York Central in 1968, the ensuing "refining" of its labour force had given the company the excuse they'd needed to force him into retirement.

By then he was alone, his Rosalyn, and his children, long since departed. The Pennsy had taken the one joy he'd had in his life away from him, but in the long run, they couldn't keep him from being a passenger. Passengers could have an opinion and passengers always were allowed to have a voice.

When he'd heard the Liaison Office of the People's Republic of China was going to open on Connecticut, he'd felt sickened. Nixon had sold the country out to the damn Chinese while they were still doing their best to kill as many Americans as they could in Vietnam. Maybe it allowed the President to put his finger on the Russians, but that wouldn't lend much comfort to the mothers of the kids coming home in bags.

So Mandarin had joined the lexicon of his quest.

He sat facing the men, two seats away, his tired bones aching in the faded blue, Naugahyde covered boards that passed for cushions. He took his feet, steady on the moving train thanks to years of practice, took a few steps and leaned forward to deliver his verbal bile.  
"你们真的没礼貌，你们知不知道？这个国家给你们的欢迎很热烈，可是你们坚持用外语说话。你们不但会给别人留下很坏，很不客气的印象，而且让他们以为你们就是阴谋家。你们自私的行为会破坏美国人对说英语的外国人的信任"。Jacob said the words in nearly a whisper. He'd found modern sensibilities made it just as likely the sentiments of the other patrons in the car would turn on him, rather than on the clamouring yellow demons.

And then came the show, the part he longed for the most, even more than the long since departed applause. He stepped back, never turning his back on them, and retook his seat. The expressions on their faces, that was the real reward, and he was not disappointed. Over fifty years, and hundreds of faces, he'd never seen such a reaction. Their mouths both dropped and the colour of their faces lightened several hues, and to him it seemed for a moment their eyes opened wide in awe. Very wide indeed. It was as if a caveman had begun to sing opera to them. How dare this wrinkle of an old man know their language?

Slowly he began to wonder exactly what the hell the two men had been discussing to warrant such a response. Their looks of surprise were quickly replaced by those of anger as their pulled tight and reddened. They looked at each other, seemed to come to some form of nonverbal agreement, and then didn't speak again for the remainder of the ride. The two men simply stared at him with sheer disdain.

After a while, he could no longer meet their gazes, and he had to turn away. There was something inhuman about their stares, as if they were looking at an insect to be brushed away, and he began to feel afraid.

Jacob Mendelssohn decided he didn't feel like taking the line all the way out to Shady Grove today, he would try to leave at one of the more crowded stops.

* * *

James Bond was older than he should be, and he knew it. M had called it "special dispensation" when they informed him his personal request to remain a "00" after his 45th birthday had been approved. The Old Man never would have told him so, but Moneypenny had informed him the OK had come from the MOD, himself.

"Truth be told," she'd said to him in the Admiral's outer office. "The whole "00" section didn't come into being until The War, so there aren't any precedents, only guidelines. I don't think they really ever envisioned anyone lasting that long, one way or the other."

"Thanks for the encouraging words, Penny," he said back, all too aware the two other men, and one woman, that made up the current "00" roster, were very much his juniors. When he'd been killing Nazi's, they had most likely been reading Tintin and worrying about when they could get chocolates again.

So it was to be the Old Man's choice, or his own, when either felt he was no longer able to hold up to the rigorous duties of his posting. He knew though, as did M, the fates would most likely make the choice for them. When he could no longer suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune they were going to end up buried in the back of his skull.

As it was, he was happy to be out of the grey building with its promises of an unending tide of paperwork. Washington D.C. was never his favourite American city, but sometimes good company could overcome bad memories.

"Not feminine enough?" Juliette Bliss sputtered as she coughed out some of her gin and tonic, drawing discourteous glances from some of the more chic patronage of the bar at Churreria Madrid. "And how do you come by that, my Neanderthal friend?"

Bond calmly leaned back, none too mean a feat in the garish bar stools, and tapped the tip of an unlit Morland against the gunmetal case, attempting to suppress the wolf's grin that longed to destroy the cruel set of his mouth.

"It isn't a social statement, my Dear," he continued on. "It is simply a matter of observation. And unless you are far more liberated that I have been led to believe, you couldn't really have enough field experience to offer an educated opinion. Some things are just what they are, and not what we'd like to imagine them to be by principle."

Juliette's hazel eyes glared with indignant and playful pleasure.

They were seated at a small, round, high-topped bar table in the crowded, smoke-filled outer lounge of what was purported to be Washington's newest, and best, Spanish restaurant. Personally, Bond had always been suspicious of ethnic restaurants in foreign countries, and always preferred to eat indigenous cuisine. In this instance, however, he had let the lady decide.

Juliette reached out and grabbed the arm of a passing waitress, a beautiful dark skinned girl that could have walked straight off the streets of Barcelona.

"Miss, could I borrow you for a moment?" The woman appeared to be surprised at first, but smiled warmly as she turned and saw Bond.

"How...may...I help you?" she stammered, baring a lovely accent in an attractive, new-to-the-language, cautious hesitancy.

"My friend here seems to feel liberated women are inferior in bed compared to ...traditional women."

The girl smiled even more widely, looking back and forth between Bond and Juliette and then said curtly, _"Me disculpo, yo no hablo inglés."_ She quickly moved on to another table.

"Juliet, I am not trying to offend you, but it is a simple matter of surrender. Liberated women are ashamed when they surrender themselves, as if they feel they are prostrating themselves before a man every time they make love. A more feminine lover isn't afraid to be a woman, and doesn't see pleasuring herself as a form of submission."

"Bollocks!" Juliette shot back. "Every time I convince myself I want to make amendments to our hereto professional relationship, you open that damned mouth of yours."

As a pretext, M had sent Bond to Washington to evaluate and establish security protocols for the new British Ambassador, Sir Winston Barber, but it was more of an attempt to put some distance between Bond and the Ministry of Defence as they attempted to sort out the literal bodies of seven Angolan foreign nationals that had been found adrift on a yacht in international waters, apparently on their way to Portsmouth. Sir Winston had been an amiable enough fellow, and had lent him the use of one of his chief staffers, Juliette Bliss. Juliette, a slip of a girl from London, Ontario, was in her late twenties and was infected with a liberal spark, and a cunning tongue, that gave Bond no end of entertainment.

"I have always considered myself to be a rather open-minded fellow," Bond told her. "And I would be more than receptive to being proven wrong."

Bliss pinched up here face comically, as if she'd taken a bite from a lemon peel.

"You're old enough to be my father," she informed him in a playful manner.

"Yes," he agreed. "But I'm quite certain he's not my type."

She took another sip of her drink, and then leaned forward on the table, levelling her gaze at him. Her straight, raven hair hung well past her shoulders, framing a face that would have normally been a little too angular for Bond's tastes, but was offset by her doe-ish brown eyes. Beneath her blouse and slacks she appeared to have a thin, but firm build. However, it was the wicked spark behind those eyes that was drawing him along with her playful banter.

"Hmmmm..." she seemed to consider him for a moment. "Well, I've never been accused of being unwilling to try old things. Why don't you order us a couple more drinks, some _Almejas a La Marinera_, and we can discuss things when I get back from the wash room."

As Bond pondered the occasional benefits of a liberated woman, Juliette climbed off her seat and left.

* * *

Jacob left the train at the Bethesda station, and as he'd hoped, the stop was crowded. He hadn't seen the Chinamen leave the train in the bustle of the crowd surging off, then onto the train, and he began to feel foolish for having panicked so.

He walked past a stout station guard and felt the waves of tension being shed from his body. Still, it would do his state of mind some good to put some distance between himself and the Metro line. He could always catch a taxi out on Champlain.

As his feet struck the pavement outside the station, he became painfully aware that his 73-year-old bladder was once again rebelling and demanding immediate relief.

The light of the day was beginning to wane as he made his way to the closest restaurant, and he could feel a late summer New England chill grab hold of him for a moment, making him shudder.

He shoved open the door to the restaurant and walked up to the pretty hostess at the reception podium.

"Do you have a bathroom?"

_ "De baño?"_ she asked.

"For God's sake," he muttered under his breath, and then nodded.

She directed him to a dimly lit hallway to her left that led away from the bar and the main dining area.

He made it to the men's room with little time to spare, and fumbled with his pants while standing at the urinal, before finally finding his relief. Jacob Mendelssohn closed his eyes in a moment of respite, listening to the sound of liquid against porcelain.

Then the door of the restroom opened behind him and death walked in.

A hand firmly grasped the hair at the back of his skull and slammed his forehead forward hard enough to make the Spanish tiles that covered the wall before him shatter.

His pants fell about his ankles and a moment later the rest of him joined them on the floor. He couldn't bring his eyes to focus right away, but he could hear the bastards barking their hushed bursts of Mandarin back and forth at one another.

Hell if he was going to die on a bathroom floor with his pants around his ankles. Jacob blindly kicked out with both feet, and was surprised when he connected with something solid, followed by an audible "oof" sound as the air was expelled from one of his attackers. He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and scrambled for the bathroom door, which hung just a few feet before him.

He looked back at his attackers for a moment, and immediately regretted it, as the whipping motion of his neck made his whole world sway and darken. The blood from his forehead was running into his eyes now, stinging them, but he could still see one of the blue-suited men tugging inside his vest and pulling out an odd looking pistol. The other man was slumped up against the urinal where he'd blissfully been a moment before.

Jacob reached up to grasp the door handle, and then fell out onto the tiles of the hallway, half-naked and bleeding.

And there stood a beautiful, dark haired angel who had been heading for the ladies' room, just across the hallway, fumbling for something in her purse. A look of shock crept onto her face as she looked down at him.

"Help me," he groaned as he reached out a hand to her.

Just then, the man with the gun burst out of the bathroom door, kicked Jacob in his shoulder so that he sprawled out onto his back, and then placed the long, tapered shaft of the pistol up against the centre of the older man's face.

There was a thudding sound that Jacob would associate more with the pop of a champagne cork than a gun firing, and then there was nothing as the back of his head exploded across the Spanish tiles.

* * *

Juliette gasped air into her shocked lungs, paused a moment, and then screamed with all the might that God had given her.

The small Chinese man twirled to face her, and reached out with his free hand to grasp at her. She instinctively backed up, and all that he could clutch was the front strap of her handbag. Juliet let go of the purse as a second man, similarly dressed, burst through the men's room door. She turned heel and ran back toward the restaurant, screaming as she went.

* * *

Bond had leapt to his feet with the first scream, and met Juliette outside the hallway that lead to the washrooms. He grabbed her by her forearms as she tried to push past him, and gave her a firm shake to jolt her out of her panic and get her to focus on him, if only for a moment.

"What the devil is going on?" he shouted at her just as the two men came darting out of the corridor behind her and made for the entrance door.

James Bond instinctively turned to chase after the pair, but the second man pointed his pistol back toward Juliette and him. Bond quickly pulled her down and started to throw his own body on top of hers. There was a "pfffft" sound as a bullet dug into a counter behind them.

Bond immediately recognized the out-curved muzzle, and distinctive rapport, of the Type 67 silenced pistol.

He was instantly back on his feet, the PPK sliding neatly from his shoulder holster, but the men were gone. He weighed the value of pursuing the men, and then looked back down the hallway at the bloody body that lay there, and then down at Juliette who still lay shocked, and flat, across the floor. He breathed heavily, and re-holstered the Walther.

There would be police in a few minutes, and a lot of questions; questions that he wasn't going to leave Juliette to face alone. And if his suspicions about the two men he'd just seen were correct, he wasn't going to be leaving her alone at all.

So much for avoiding the paperwork, he thought to himself.

From his room on the fourteenth floor of the Madison, Bond had a commanding view of the Capitol Building, which stood a mere four blocks away from the hotel. Even at three in the morning, the marble mountains of the U.S. capitol skyline were lit and glaring through the wide windows of his suite.

By the time the Capitol Police were done, Juliette's shaking had subsided some, but she had still grasped at the proffered glass of Beefeater from what the hotel literature had proudly dubbed a "mini-bar". The gin was stronger than its British patron, and he only lightly cut it with tonic, forgoing any further amenities.

There had only been a token resistance to his offer of going back to his room. The attackers had taken her handbag, and even the police in their plodding and procedural manner had suggested she find alternate lodging until things had "settled down."

He'd left the room lights off, instead opening the drapes fully upon the city below, allowing the ambient light to fill the room with its glow as he settled the girl down on the edge of the king-sized bed.

"You must think me such a fool carrying on like this," the girl sobbed, threatening the verge of tears once more as she wrung her hands about the glass she held like a lifeline, making small chirping sounds along the condensation from the ice. "I've never actually seen anyone murdered before."

Bond, who abhorred crying women, attempted to placate her with the right words, and kept her glass full, until her hysteria began to transform into a slurred, but gentle, exhaustion. She was still sitting, albeit a little more wobbly, on the bed when he turned down a corner of the sheets.

She eyed him suspiciously as he came back and knelt before her, taking the drink from her, and then holding both her hands in his. Even with the tears having streaked her mascara into clown's eyes, she was still amazing, her dark hair framed against her pale skin which glowed in the light of the skyline.

"This isn't the way I wanted," she stammered, raising her hands to her mouth, with his going along for the ride. She caressed his knuckles lightly and he felt himself begin to stir.

He rose to his feet and pulled his hands back quickly, a little too quickly he realised a fraction of a second too late as her sobs returned with gusto.

"And it isn't the way it will," he told her. "You've been through enough tonight without me mucking the water up anymore. When the time comes, and God willing, it will come, we will do this right. What you need now is sleep."

"**** what I need," she said through her weeping. "It's what I want. Don't be cold to me now, James."

He turned to a Victorian chest of drawers and rooted about for a moment, emerging with a set of pyjamas in hand.

This brought an end to her crying and she blubbered a laugh.

"You still wear PJ's? Maybe you are my father."

Now it was Bond's turn to frown as he tossed them onto the bed next to her. She picked up the top hesitantly, the dark blue of the fabric appearing black in the muted light.

"My God, they're so soft."

_"Galeries Lafayette,"_ he muttered. "They are fine silk, and they'll touch your skin in a way your father would most certainly never approve of."

As she undressed, Bond turned his back to her, winning him further chiding and giggles. At least it was better than the tears, he decided.

"You can turn around now," she finally told him.

James Bond turned to find Juliette still holding the pyjama bottoms in her hand. The large night shirt hung from her like a dress, but her long, shapely legs, although still descent, hung temptingly beneath the hem of the silk coat.

He was staring when the pants hit him in the chest.

"You can wear those," she told him with a coy smile.

As he tucked her beneath the covers she cooed and drew breath in between her clenched teeth.

"Silk sheets, silk pyjamas, if I'm not careful I'll slide right out onto the floor."

"Wouldn't that be a shame," he told her flatly.

They kissed briefly, long enough to be more than comfort, but far short of passion.

"I wish," she told him from the edge of sleep. "You were a little more Romeo, and a little less the gentleman."

As she began to doze, he took the chair opposite the bed, watching her form gently rise and fall. "So do I, Juliette," he muttered. "So do I."

He eventually removed the briefcase he kept in the suite's safe and took out his Beretta, taking a few moments to thread the silencer, before placing his Walther back in the case. Bond also removed the two, wooden triangular shims that he always took when travelling, and then shut the case and spun the safe closed.

The girl had him far too worked up, and even though the evening's events hadn't appeared to be about them, he couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that something was amiss. It wasn't a simple robbery or disagreement; the one Chinese man had been using a silenced Type 67, which at least would make them PRA, and most likely, Ministry of Public Security. That alone, would warrant a check-in call to the station chief, but he was certain that what they'd witnessed had been an execution. When they went through Juliette's identification, they would find her Canadian papers, and then they would trace her to the Embassy with little effort. From there, it was all a matter of how much of a threat they viewed a witness. He doubted they would be onto him at all, so whatever tension he was feeling, was most likely just misdirected anger at having a very promising evening shot to hell.

He made his call from the courtesy phone in the hallway outside the room. The man working the desk of Station W sounded half-asleep himself, but he seemed to take the details to heart, and even asked a few questions.

"There has been quite a bit of PRC activity in DC of late," he told Bond while apparently stifling a yawn. "But then again, it is a dangerous town. We'll keep you informed if anything of interest should come up."

When Bond returned to the room, he secured the locks, and then toed in the two wedges beneath the door. He felt sillier than ever, but he'd stayed alive too long at this game to doubt himself now.

More than an hour had passed as he sat in the chair opposite the sleeping girl, the gun held loosely in one hand as it rested in his lap. He could still make out the scent of her Yves Saint Laurent's Rive Gauche in the room, and could still feel the haunting touch of her lips on his hand.

He rose from the chair, took off his shirt, and went through a hundred agonizingly slow sit-ups, and then an equal number of slow push-ups, his arms held wide. The burn in his muscles felt good, but it did little to drive her from his mind.

Daylight slowly began to edge the evening sky through the windows as he stripped off his evening clothes and made his way to the luxurious shower where he tortured himself with scalding hot, and then freezing cold water, the latter finally helping to tilt the field of battle against his desires.

He dried himself with a terry cloth towel and slid into the silk pyjama bottoms. Bond once again took his perch across from Juliette, gun in hand, listening to her light snores.

He had pretty much convinced himself his vigil had been for naught and that he was destined to be a zombie the next day for lack of sleep, when Juliette Brass began to whimper in her sleep.

Her back was too him as she slept on her side, but the sound of sadness and fear were still very clear in her distressed sobs.

He'd been at this for so long, seen so much wrong, that he often forgot, or didn't care to remember, what death and violence were to most people. What was adrenaline for his soul was often poison for others'.

"Don't be cold to me now, James," she had said.

He put the Beretta down on the arm of the chair and went to her side. Slowly, he began to gently run his hand along her auburn hair which was splayed out on the down pillow. Over time, her whimpering stopped, and her breathing became more regular. A few strands of hair had fallen over her face, and he brushed them back with care, taking in her beauty as he did so. How had he ever thought her face was too sharp? In sleep, she was an angel.

Slowly, her deep brown eyes opened, and she turned to look at him. He bent down and kissed her harder than before, and she returned in kind, at first hesitantly, and then with her own hunger.

"I thought you didn't want to do this?" she said, catching her breath.

"**** what I want," he told her before bringing his lips down harder still, her eyes wide, inviting, and hungry. "I need this."

Her arms went about his neck as he made his way beneath the covers. As they moved against the sheets, and against one another, Juliette's comments earlier about the silks became prophetic as her body slid smoothly across the sheets tautly to and fro beneath him. Somewhere in the early morning, they both fell asleep, entangled with one another in a lovers' knot of arms and legs.

* * *

There was an icy chill to the air in the room, but James Bond couldn't bring himself to care.

There was also a fruity smell, almost like that of a lemon grove in spring, wafting about on the cold breeze, but that didn't faze him much either.

James Bond was normally a cautious and light sleeper, so it was with surprise that he groggily awoke to the pressure of the gun barrel thrusting against his cheek.


End file.
